Long before anyone dreamed of a tunnel, the Gotthard was a rumour of a route: a way through the central Alps that, once the Devil's Bridge was thrown across the gorge of the Schöllenen in the thirteenth century, turned a remote valley into the shortest link between northern Europe and Italy. Merchants, pilgrims, soldiers and mule trains all used it, and the hospice at the top gave them a bed. The Tremola, the cobbled stair on the southern side, is the nineteenth-century answer to the same problem.
Ticino built it in the 1820s and early 1830s, when the canton was young and keen to bind itself to the north, and the engineers laid the road in a zigzag of stone-walled hairpins up the steep face above Airolo. Coaches with six horses made the climb, and the passes were crowded with mail, travellers and the odd famous name. When the railway tunnel opened in 1882 the traffic dried up almost overnight, and the road fell into a long sleep. It was revived in the last few decades, the cobbles relaid, and it now carries riders, cyclists and anyone with an appetite for old engineering.
The setting changes as you climb. At the bottom the slopes are wooded and warm, with the voices of the south. In the middle the road cuts across bare slabs of gneiss, polished by ice and streaked by seepage. Near the top the air thins and the vegetation shrinks to grass and lichen, and the lake beside the hospice reflects a pale sky. In spring the snow lies in the hollows long after the road has opened, and in autumn the first dusting arrives early.
The surface needs respect, especially when wet. If you are riding the old road, go on a dry day, keep your speed low and your steering relaxed, and enjoy being part of something that has been going on for two centuries.